Misinterpretation
by scintillant.blackskies
Summary: Post-Eclipse/Pre-Epilogue. Renee is eccentric; she's a dreamer. But does she always dream the truth? Slightly AU, oneshot.


_Disclaimer: I do not, and will never, own the Twilight series._

_A/N: Found this just tonight, wrote it a few months ago. I still have small problems with it, but whatever. (My) explanation/reasoning to the end, if you'd like to know what I was thinking. Hope you like it. _

* * *

-

The warm California sun beat down on all the inhabitants of the city. Orange beams ran the length of tall buildings, while streaks of pale pink and purple lined the wise, timeless lines of the sky. The sunset made the woman's soft hair shine to almost impossible measures as she watched little children play by the boardwalk, their pastel-colored clothing adding nicely to the little slice of heaven. It was her kind of day.

"See?" She'd said to the little girl in her own lap, as she played with the bright gold of her mother's necklace. "That's a sapphire- the stone of September. Yours." The three-year-old's small hands twisted the pendant at the tips of her pale little fingers. Renee laughed as the dwindling rays of the sun hit the deep blue jewel once more. Her daughter was in awe, as was Renee- she had been waiting for this kind of bonding for a long while, under the sun.

She kissed the tip of her daughter's nose. "Let's go eat."

Renee had no problem carrying her daughter in her thin arms as she looked into the windows of the shops that lined the narrow street. It was the best kind of companionship, after all- her daughter would mumble little words into her ear as she listened to the crunches of shoes on the concrete.

Bella had, however, begged to be let down at one point. Before the young mother knew, the toddler ran as fast as her short legs could carry her across the street, out towards the ocean- towards the sun, once more.

"Bella!" She caught her daughter just before she would climb through the railings the bridge provided. Her daughter almost barreled into a person instead.

Renee looked up to see an older man smiling down at her daughter with unmasked humor in his eyes. "Ah," he said, a knowing twinkle in his eyes, "childhood. I wish I was on that end of the spectrum." His laugh was deep and throaty, and his blue eyes held simple wisdom- acquired by only the most intelligent.

Bella giggled at the man's voice, not having heard something so low before. Her mother apologized swiftly before picking her daughter up once more. The man only nodded, waving off her worries.

"You have a very nice evening," he'd said. "No apologies are needed on a day so beautiful as this. God bless."

"God bless you." Her words were faint compared to the steady hum of the surrounding people as she watched the man walk away. The experience, although brief and ordinary, filled her with a very pleasant sense of what she could only describe as hope. That he was there, at that very moment, to protect Bella. Her only child.

But as she watched the man walk backwards three, four, then five feet away from her- in slow motion, it seemed- while his features began to become more and more distorted. The hair, full around the ear and neck but not so much on the head, seemed to crawl upwards as it filled long-vacated spaces. The color went from a fine white to a duller peppered gray, the noticeably finer wisps shining differently in the sunlight.

The shoulders, hunched ever so slightly from doing possible farm work, straightened as if held up by an iron bar. The man thinned more than Renee thought he should, and seemed to grow at least six inches in a matter of seconds. In the way he now held his body, she was reminded of a 1940's businessman instead of a plantation worker. He now held himself with a very subtle authority.

The skin, a very translucent tone despite the hot weather, darkened fractionally while a few large age spots faded. The darker skin was now replaced by thousands of tiny, fine wrinkles instead of the larger, bolder ones Renee had only seen seconds ago. Even so, the man looked at least five years older.

His hands were now brought to her attention. The stubby fingers and calloused palms gave way to thinner and more tense digits, with one so crooked at the end it looked like it had been broken at least a dozen times. Part of his left wrist seemed to cave in, and out of it came a scar- mangled and terrifying, still a deep red despite the passing of the years. It traveled up straight to the crease at his elbow, and then curved suddenly- the lines showed no mercy to the poor man's skin. A large red spot plastered itself onto the forearm, and the elbow twitched. Renee could tell quite clearly that this new man had been shot badly in the past.

Her eyes, playing this sick game, forced themselves up to the unnamed man's face. The crystal-clear blue eyes turned white for an instant as rolled to the back of his head. As Renee cringed at the sight, the soft planes of his face caved in and were hammered out at the same time. The soft hills and valleys of his cheeks and nose gave way to sharp, angular lines. The forehead got wider, even though the face as a whole seemed to thin somewhat. The eyes that now rolled back into place were green.

Renee turned back to her daughter, expecting to see a happy, unobservant child. The only thing that held any sense of truth to her.

But there was a young woman in the place of her beloved, nothing in her arms anymore. Was it her, as a teenager? It did look like it- with the narrow nose and the slightly pointed chin.

However, she could also see the dark eyebrows creased in worry and the lines around her mouth that looked exactly like her father's. Like Charlie's.

"Bella? That life... was not meant for me." Renee turned to see who said those puzzling words. She heard them so clearly, even if the words were only spoke in a whisper...

Her eyes landed on the old man once more, and she soon realized that he was staring at her daughter with unmistakable lust in his eyes, pools of green. Her _daughter_, the pervert.

But that was before the explosion. Before the old man's skin fell of of him like cloth, before a mass of copper bronze hair replaced the thin gray ones. Before he was more beautiful than any man she'd ever seen, reflecting light like glass prisms often did.

In horror or shock she watched, she wasn't sure- as her much older daughter willingly flung herself into the arms of the boy that now looked her age. His eyes, now a startlingly gold color, closed as he lessened the distance between their lips.

And with that final kiss of downright untrue love, Renee awakened.

She remembered that day in sunny California. She remembered Bella's hands on her throat, looking at the necklace. She remembered the old man, remembered thanking him as he saved her daughter from looking at the water, and not realizing the bridge.

But she wasn't sure _which_ man it was that was there.

Renee read the invitation to her daughter's wedding as she got up to pack. Maybe Forks would hold the answer.

* * *

_Hehe. So I guess you could take a few things from this..._

_It's Bella and Edward's wedding. Renee's dream changes the man she _actually_ met at the boardwalk to what Edward _should _have been- had Carlisle not changed him or had he never caught the flu- and that Edward should not be in the body that will soon be married to her daughter. The year the dream takes place is 1989 or 1990- both years that (human) Edward could have totally been alive, with scars from WW1._

_It's Bella and Jacob's wedding, and Renee dreams of what _would_ have been if Edward were a vampire and still 17. The man she met at the boardwalk could actually have _been_ Edward (I admit, it's a long shot... but it's Renee's dream D) or the blue-eyed man... she can't be sure anymore._

_Renee realizes that the relationship is wrong or unusual, no matter _who_ Bella is marrying- if she were to marry Jacob, there could have been something much better, and if she were to marry Edward, it's totally unconventional._

_So yeah. Sorry I think like that... probably ruined what little this story had going for it!_


End file.
